EPA Awards $168,000 to University of Hawaii, Manoa Graduate Students through Research Fellowships

HONOLULU -- Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $168,000 in fellowship grants to two students at the University of Hawaii, Manoa conducting research and studying in environmental disciplines. These students selected will work on pollution and coral reef ecosystem research. More than $8.6 million in fellowship grants were announced to 105 graduate students across the nation.

“These fellowships support our next generation scientists and engineers as they earn advanced degrees in environmental sciences and do cutting-edge research,” said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “EPA’s goal is to ensure that our nation continues to have the scientific knowledge to meet environmental challenges such as climate change.”

The Science to Achieve Results (STAR) fellowship program will support scientists and engineers who are investigating environmental challenges such as the effects of climate change on waterborne human pathogens and antibiotic resistant bacteria, the interaction between pollutants and infectious disease, classifying and restoring Pacific Northwest streams to improve water quality and fish habitat, mitigating the impacts of climate change on plant communities by transforming the way we restore wetlands, and improving our understanding of where and why harmful algal blooms occur by examining the way nutrients move through river systems.

The following STAR fellows were selected from the University of Hawaii—Manoa. Each fellow will receive $84,000 funding for two years of research. The two projects are:

Project title: Acclimatization of Coral Populations to Local and Global Stressors: Can Corals Adapt to Future Threats?

The graduate students from the STAR fellowship program have been involved in critical and cutting edge environmental science and research opportunities for almost two decades. Since the inception of the STAR fellowship program in 1995, EPA has been committed to supporting students interested in the environmental science fields. 2015 will mark 20 years of funding STAR fellowship students who have made cross cutting impact in the environmental science field. Since its inception, STAR has awarded fellowships to 1,884 students, totaling approximately $65 million in funding.

Many STAR fellows continue on to find success in the public and private sector focusing their efforts on environmental and public health issues. Jeff Hobson, a 1996 STAR fellow from the University of California, Berkeley, is now the Deputy Director of Transform, California’s leading transportation advocate and an award-winning nonprofit organization working in the San Francisco Bay Area and California. TransForm's campaigns have helped raise over $8 billion for sustainable and socially-just transportation and led to ground-breaking policies linking transportation and land use planning.

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